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Arakawa heralds Japan's new wave

TURIN:Japan has its first Olympic figure skating gold medalist, and it would be no surprise if Shizuka Arakawa soon has company, perhaps as soon as the next Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.

The Russians won three of the four figure skating titles in Turin, but the continental plates are shifting, and while the 24-year-old Arakawa made it clear after her historic victory in the women's event on Thursday night that she has no expectation of skating in 2010, it keeps getting tougher to see the bottom of Japan's talent pool.

"They are helping each other," said Arakawa's coach, Nikolai Morozov. "I think the national championships in Japan is the same as the Olympic Games or world championships, because there are so many skaters."

Mao Asada, the 15-year-old who was two months too young to compete here, is unquestionably the crest of the new wave. She upset Irina Slutskaya to win the Grand Prix final this season and finished second in the Japanese national championships: one place ahead of Arakawa.

But between now and Vancouver, another young Japanese skater could emerge, or perhaps 18-year-old Miki Ando, the former quadruple-jumping wunderkind who stumbled to a 15th- place finish here, could regain her balance and improve her artistry.

Figure skating is an unpredictable art and craft as Arakawa reaffirmed here. Though she won the 2004 world title, she lost her motivation, mulled retirement and slumped to ninth at last year's world championship. Until the Olympics, she had not finished higher than third in any international competition this season. But she kept searching for sometimes radical solutions - changing coaches and changing programs in the lead-up to Turin - and she had the stronger mind as well as cleaner program on Thursday.

"I got a strong feeling while I was skating here that this was going to be one last highlight for my skating career," Arakawa said. "I had basically the same feeling at the world championships two years ago."

If it were all about potential and presence, Sasha Cohen would already be a world and Olympic champion. But there is a downside to having all eyes upon you, and while Cohen can work an arena like few skaters in history with her Cirque du Soleil flexibility and on- Broadway theatricality, she clearly lacks the nerve to rule the medal stand.

Time and again, the 21-year-old Californian has stumbled in free programs with gold at stake and despite returning to her first coach John Nicks before these Olympics and despite seeking psychological sustenance from a book by John Wooden, the American college basketball coach whose aphorisms helped UCLA win so many titles last century, she still reverted to form after taking a slight lead in Tuesday's short program.

She was shaky in the warm-up on Thursday: falling on two different jumps and bumping into Arakawa at one stage. Once Cohen's music began - Romeo and Juliet by Nino Rota did not bode well for a happy ending - it took less than 30 seconds for Cohen's title hopes to vanish as she fell on her opening jump, a triple lutz, and then stumbled out of her next: putting both hands on the ice to keep from going horizontal again.

It was difficult for the audience to savor the five triple jumps and typically elegant and evocative maneuvers that came after that. But Cohen, who skated second in the final group, did manage to get through what was left of her free program without either a nervous breakdown or another major error.

"When you go out there and you know you have all the people watching and you know what you want to do and you know that your practice hasn't gone

'When you watch her, it's like a feather. The skating, there's no noise.'

exactly right, it's kind of hard to feel like you're getting churros at Disneyland," Cohen said

To each her own culinary fantasy, but Cohen was certain that her Olympic fantasy had come crashing down and she changed out of her skating costume - only to have to change into it again after ending up with a silver medal to go with the two she already has from world championships.